Changing banks, is it profitable and easy to do?

Changing banks can be a real source of savings, not to be overlooked in this period of loss of purchasing power. First, because the big French banks have a heavy hand when it comes to charging fees to their customers, especially in the event of incidents. Then, because the prices vary a lot from one establishment to another, especially if we consider the online banks, Boursorama, Fortuneo, Hello Bank for example, all held precisely by these large banks. In this case, there are no account maintenance fees or credit card fees. At the end of the day, these are real savings to be made.

But changing banks is above all easier since the law on banking mobility of 2017. All you have to do is give a mandate to the bank you want to join: it is the bank that will carry out all the formalities related to the change of bank domiciliation of your regular transactions. Concretely, this means that you will not have to provide a new IBAN to your internet operator, your mobile operator, or even your electricity supplier. And there is no risk of being debited from both accounts at the same time since you choose the date of the changeover from one account to the other.

In practice, there are still bugs. The testimonies we have received show that some banks are struggling to close the accounts of customers who leave, for various pretexts. Then, some direct debit issuers do not play the game, by not taking into account the change requested by the new bank. I paid for it personally with the electricity supplier Dyneff.

Finally, a certain number of financial products (life insurance, PEL, Livret A, etc.) do not fall within the scope of banking mobility, which obliges their holders to make the changes manually, which can lead to misunderstandings on the part of users.